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Comment by Quick2822 | Hacker News Reader

A little something about the author of the opinion piece.

During his testimony in December 2020, Kory erroneously claimed that the antiparasitic medication ivermectin was a "wonder drug" with "miraculous effectiveness" against COVID-19.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Kory

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And? Ivermectin is a notable antiviral medication that many, many Americans took to limit the COVID viral spread in their body. The media's attack on it was purely from a Pharma profit motive.

You are right Ivermectin is an antiviral and also right many Americans (and not only) took it. The results however, according to Google at least, seem to be at most "meh". The first results page shows only one positive correlation: in hamsters. But I'd be happy to see some more positive studies.

Here’s one from the NIH

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33278625/

The takeaway I got from this post was you only see positive effects in countries where lots of people had stomach worms and the ivermectin was probably actually just helping with that: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-y...

> “Larger trials will be needed to confirm these preliminary findings.”

So were there actual follow ups to this study where the sample size is not just 72?

Pfizer found out it was a protease inhibitor and made a new expensive patent drug based off this completely useless and dangerous right wing propaganda. This completely pointless and horrible unsafe ivermectin's effects were amplified to cure COVID.

I don't understand why people don't see the profit motive in "alternative" medicine.

There is profit motive everywhere in everything because we live in a market economy. Alternative medicine is a gigantic industry, as is "alternative" media etc. Everyone is making money and people tend to promote the things they are selling.

It's the typical populist thing of "I don't trust the establishment anymore, so now I am going to go mindlessly believe everything this random asshole on YouTube says..."

To be fair reading about Ayurvedic or Traditional Chinese Medicine isn’t lining anyone’s pockets

Which is a big reason why you don't often see these promoted as heavily as stuff like supplements and ivermectin was. I don't remember ever seeing those promoted in mainstream media, or even most 'alternative' media. Mostly just instragram influencers promoting their course.

Ivermectin is not part of what I'd call alternative medicine so it is quite irrelevant as to whether any promotion of such is based on a profit motive. What Ivermectin is - and what most likely caused it to be the black sheep to those who instigated its banishment - is dirt cheap. This makes it more likely that the actual profit motive did not lie in those promoting Ivermectin but in those who called for its banishment since there is hardly any profit to be made on something that cheap.

This is a ringing endorsement for his integrity. He wasn't afraid of saying the truth.

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